


Working the Steps

by the_wordbutler



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:42:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_wordbutler/pseuds/the_wordbutler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bruce discovers that everyone has secrets, and everyone still suffers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working the Steps

The first time, it’s three weeks after—well.  What you call it depends on what news station you watch, whether you want to wake up scared of your own shadow every morning.  NPR just calls it “the attack on Manhattan,” and that’s the name Bruce usually uses.  At least, in his own head, because Tony calls it their “debut” and doesn’t really accept alternatives.

 

He leaves Stark Tower in the middle of the morning, citing a need for air, and he keeps his hands in his pockets until he’s three blocks away and can hail a cab.  He hands the address, scribbled out on a scrap of paper, to the driver.  It’s in Brooklyn, and the fare’s expensive, but—

 

Privacy’s still important.

 

Maybe it won’t be in six months, or a year, but . . .  Right now, it’s complicated.

 

That’s the only label he can assign to it.  Complicated.

 

The church is old, a red-brick building on a block of red-brick buildings with a wrought-iron fence circling its tiny yard.  The windows have those corrugated beige protectors in front of them, plastic that mutes the color of the stained glass.  He squints at the images, but he can’t quite make them out.  At least one’s of Mary, with a dipped head and her iconic blue shawl; another one’s probably Jesus and the two thieves on their crosses, waiting to die.  He’s never understood why churches advertise Jesus’s suffering like that.  Their parishioners, they all suffer every day, in some form or another.  Is it just a reminder that Jesus didn’t have the easiest time, either?

 

(And if that’s the case, why does religion work so hard to guilt, oh, everyone?

 

 _Wrong questions to ask yourself before you go into a church, Banner_ , he thinks, but—he also thinks he has a point.)

 

The basement’s barely-finished, with bare concrete walls and a bare concrete floor.  There are roughly colored-in pictures of Noah and his ark taped over the snack table, and he browses them while he’s waiting his turn for the coffee.  In one, a zebra is purple; in another, the ark is rainbow-colored.  He’s snorting a little laugh at the one where Noah’s robes are silver when a woman asks, “Are you—here for the meeting?”

 

Bruce blinks and turns to her.  She’s pretty, probably in her early thirties, and wears a long skirt and feather earrings.  She looks like she belongs barefoot in the park, not locked up in a basement on a warm day.  “Yeah,” he answers, when she watches him for too long.

 

The coffee pot’s free, now, but she stays between them.  “Is this—your first?”

 

“Ever?  No.  Just—here.”  A heavy-set, balding man murmurs his _excuse me_ s to the woman and helps himself to the coffee.  Bruce watches him, instead of her.  “I’m just—checking it out.”

 

“Well, I can introduce you if you’d—”

 

“No.”  He doesn’t realize how strong the word is, how it _sounds_ , until their eyes meet.  Hers are wide with surprise, and Bruce—he feels bad.  She doesn’t realize what she’s asking, not really.  She’s just a nice woman, with good intentions, and—  “I . . .  I’m more comfortable just watching, thanks.”

 

“Okay,” she says, but she walks away quickly.  Too quickly, he catches himself thinking, but then he shakes the thought out of his head.  He pours himself a cup of coffee—watery and luke-warm, but the cup’s something to hold onto—and finds a chair in the back of the group.  There’s coming up on thirty people crowded into those cold, gray folding chairs, and he watches their faces through the introductions, the reading, and then the sharing.

 

Afterward, he throws his still-full coffee cup away, thanks the pretty woman (who’s manning the door and shaking hands), and slips outside without speaking to anyone else.

 

He stands on the sidewalk for ten minutes before he calls a cab, trying to work out what the other stained-glass pictures are.  But he can’t, not through the thick plastic.

 

He goes back to Stark Tower, instead.

 

 

 

 

The second time, it’s the week after the rest of the team’s moved in.  His apartment is sandwiched between Natasha’s and Steve’s, and it’s hard getting used to the flurry of activity—elevator chimes, people barging in while he’s trying to read, Tony declaring that it’s fight night, game night, movie night, or breakfast-for-dinner night—and he starts to feel . . .  “Claustrophobic” isn’t the right word.  Neither is “boxed in.”  But he starts to feel almost itchy, like four people who know him well are four people too many, and he declines Tony’s ice cream sundae bar for a walk.

 

Except it’s not a walk.  No, it’s a twenty-block subway ride, standing in the front of the car and watching teenagers text without glancing at him.  There’s something hypnotic about the swaying motion and the regular noise of the train on the tracks.  In a way, it’s more relaxing and consistent than—

 

Well, it’s not _home_.  Not yet.  Not for him.

 

(He makes a point of calling it _home_ around Tony.  He’s—sensitive, somehow, to that.)

 

When he emerges from the subway, he can already see the church.  It’s Roman Catholic, cathedral style, and it stretches above all the shops and walk-up apartment buildings around it.  The church’s seen a thousand iterations of this block, Bruce thinks, and it’s still standing.  Humans could learn a lot about persistence from architecture.

 

The foyer’s wider than it is long, and the doors to the sanctuary are standing open.  The chandeliers are on, but dim, and they cast this half-golden light over stone and wood.  The fonts of holy water look a little like fairy ponds.

 

But the light isn’t kind to the wooden icon of Jesus hanging from his cross.  No, there’s shadows from the organ cast over the carving, and it looks—almost twisted.  Haunted, instead of comforting.

 

He considers wandering into the sanctuary to see it closer, but a man offers to lead him to the meeting room.  Bruce nods and follows.

 

It’s a smaller group than in Brooklyn, just fifteen regulars who ask after one another’s children and jobs.  When Bruce declines to introduce himself, the leader murmurs, “In your own time,” and moves on.  He’s not expected to speak or to share, and afterward, the man from the foyer catches him.

 

“Thanks for coming,” he says, smiling.

 

“I—yeah,” Bruce stumbles, but he tucks his jacket under his other arm so he can shake hands.  “Thank you.”

 

He comes to that church the third, fourth, and fifth times.

 

The sixth time, though, he forgets to take off his Stark Industries access card (which he needs to get back into the Tower after hours), and Kara—thirty-five, three kids, secretary at a magnet school on the Upper East Side—asks what department he works in.

 

Bruce tucks his card away, mutters something about research . . . and doesn’t come back.

 

 

 

 

The seventh time, he’s followed.

 

The synagogue’s within walking distance, and because it’s warm out, Bruce doesn’t wear a jacket.  No, he’s in the gray shirt he’s worn all day, wrinkled from hunching over lab tables and computer consoles, and a pair of dark pants that are just the smallest measure too big.  He’s got a conference call, later, with Tony’s Japanese team.  He’s avoided the last three conference calls, but this one’s in his area of expertise.  He’s not sure he can duck it.

 

That’s why he’s out now, at lunch, instead of in the evening.

 

What it doesn’t explain is why Clint Barton’s about twenty feet behind, in jeans and a t-shirt, pretending to text while he’s trailing.

 

Bruce doesn’t—know Clint, not like he knows the others.  They don’t sit down together for a weekly history lesson (currently, Steve’s both interested in and horrified by the late 1960s), they don’t have a tacit agreement to try every foreign take-out in the city (though Natasha still hasn’t forgiven him for the Thai-hot curry), and they definitely don’t play with expensive lab equipment (or, in the most recent case, _blow up_ expensive lab equipment).  They exchange polite hellos and participate in all of Tony’s “teambuilding”, but . . . that’s about it.

 

Which is why Clint probably shouldn’t be following him, in silence, on his way to a synagogue.  Bruce almost convinces himself it’s a coincidence, too, until he cuts into the park to save time and, ten seconds later, there’s gravel crunching behind him.

 

Okay, then.

 

He wants to tell Clint off, to—chase him away, somehow, but doing that admits . . .  What, exactly?  Secrecy, maybe.  A guilty conscience.  Telling Clint to leave implies he’s doing wrong, and he’s not.

 

Not exactly.

 

It’s—hard to explain, and he doesn’t want to.

 

Instead, he says, “I know you’re following me.”  He doesn’t twist around, he doesn’t rush ahead, he just—says it to the air.

 

“I know,” Clint replies casually.  “Gonna ask why?”

 

The question catches Bruce off guard.  He falters a step, and teeters between potential answers before he says, “No.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Okay.”

 

There are a thousand other questions Bruce wants to ask, immediately, but . . .  He can’t.  He can’t without showing his hand, without giving something away, so he just—walks.  Out of the park, down the last block, and up the six steps in front of the synagogue.

 

He pauses with the door half-open and finally looks over his shoulder, but Clint’s not on the steps.  No, instead, Clint’s sitting on the bicycle rack, feet a few inches off the ground.

 

“You’re—not coming?” he asks, carefully.

 

Clint’s wearing sunglasses, and Bruce can’t see his eyes.  But he can study the shape of his jaw and the curve of his eyebrows—and like you’d expect, those things give nothing away.

 

Finally, Clint shakes his head.  “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

 

“Okay,” Bruce says, but he’s—not sure whether he’s comfortable with that.  He watches Clint slide back on the cross-bar and settle, though, and it—seems okay, leaving him there.  At least, Bruce hopes.

 

He slips inside, joins the group of about twenty, and isn’t pressured into saying a single word.  Afterwards, when he’s finishing his (surprisingly good) coffee, the leader hands him a meeting calendar.  “We’ve got an evening group that’s a little bigger,” he explains, gesturing at the times.  “If you like staying quiet.”

 

“Thanks,” Bruce says.  In the foyer, he folds the calendar into quarters and tucks it into a pocket.  He wants to trust Clint—he wants to trust _people_ —but last week, he caught Tony pawing through a stack of books on his desk.  He’d been looking for a specific dissertation on particle collision, which was fine, but . . .

 

Bruce still likes that small measure of privacy.

 

When he pushes the doors open and steps into the sunlight, Clint’s still perched on the empty bike rack.  He’s watching the street, and for the first few seconds, Bruce’s convinced that he hasn’t heard the door.

 

Then, he asks, “You good?”

 

His face doesn’t turn away from the street, so Bruce supplements his nod with, “Yeah.”

 

“Good.”  Clint slides off the bike rack and waits for Bruce to come down the steps, and that’s how they walk back to Stark Tower: together, this time, but silent.

 

 

 

 

The eighth time, Clint’s waiting for him outside the Tower.

 

It’s evening, dark enough that the streetlights have all come on, and the chill’s set in.  Bruce is fiddling with his cuffs, tugging them down after they got caught in his jacket sleeve, and he doesn’t notice Clint . . . at first.  But _at first_ is the key, because he stops right there, on the steps down to the sidewalk, once he does.

 

“Is—this a thing, now?” he asks.

 

Clint’s not in sunglasses.  He doesn’t actually wear them all that often; even if they’re training at noon and there’s not a cloud in the sky, he’s bare-eyed.  Bruce thinks it’s a ploy, his own little attempt at anonymity, to wear sunglasses when he’s out on the street.  But it’s night, and Clint values sight the way Tony values his brain (or Thor, his brawn), and Bruce can meet his eyes.  His jeans are worn and his t-shirt, soft.  Bruce wishes he did _casual_ as well as Clint does.

 

“You’re going my direction,” Clint says with a shrug.  “Nothing wrong with the company.”

 

“Nothing . . . wrong, no,” he replies.  He wants to say more, but the words don’t come, so he shoves his hands in his pockets and wanders down the steps.  Clint waits for him, like they’ve done this a thousand times, and he matches Bruce’s pace when he hits the sidewalk.

 

It’s been a long day, which is why Bruce isn’t tucked up into the corner of his couch right now, watching the _Real Housewives_ _of_. . . somewhere.  No, today he spoke at the “small conference” Tony’d brow-beaten him into attending, and froze at the podium while five hundred attendees stared at him.  He’s still uncomfortable in his own skin, like it’s too tight, and he—needs to be somewhere besides the Tower.

 

He wonders how Clint’s day was, but he . . . doesn’t ask.  He only ever asks Steve, and only because Steve values that kind of small talk.  He’s not sure how to _have_ it with anyone else.

 

Somewhere in the park, he mentions, “I didn’t think anyone noticed.”

 

Clint’s footsteps don’t falter.  “Nobody?”

 

“Not even Tony.”

 

“Well, that’s Stark for you.  Probably why he put me on security: so somebody _notices_ shit.”  Bruce twists to look at him. Clint has these—soft eyes.  They don’t match with all of his angles, the build that he works on every day in the Tower’s gym.  They almost belong to a different person, especially when they’re still and steady instead of _watching_.

 

Clint raises an eyebrow.  “Didn’t tell you that either, did he?”

 

“No,” Bruce admits.

 

“Yeah, that’s Stark for you, too.”  He shrugs and slips his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.  “You wanna know how long I’ve known?”

 

“Known . . . what exactly?”

 

“That you were sneaking out.”

 

Bruce’s lips part, for a moment.  He wets them, closes them, and swallows.  It almost feels like swallowing his own tongue.  “No,” he decides.

 

Clint nods and falls quiet.

 

They walk through the park, then down that last block, and this time, there are bikes chained to the rack.  They’re brightly-colored, not the kind that traffic-conscious commuters use to weave between cabs, and Bruce remembers the calendar momentarily.  There’s a teen group, too, that meets tonight.

 

He glances over at Clint and—smiles.  Friendly, he tells himself.  The kind of smile you share when you want a secret kept.  “Looks like your seat’s taken,” he says, and gestures to the bike rack.

 

“Not tonight,” Clint replies.  Bruce blinks when Clint takes the steps in twos . . . and again when he pulls the door open.  He turns and waits.

 

For a few seconds, Bruce doesn’t move.  He freezes there, one foot on the bottom step and the other on the sidewalk, and he—tries to decide.  He wants to go tonight.  Actually, after the day he’s had, it’s a . . . need, really, more than anything else.  And if this were Natasha, even Steve, the secret wouldn’t feel as—big.

 

But he barely knows Clint.  And he doesn’t know whether Clint’ll be able to hold onto this, to keep it—

 

“Clint!” a voice announces, and Bruce jerks around to see a woman rushing up the steps.  She’s probably his own age, wearing jeans and the kind of patterned top women in their forties always seem to wear.  For a moment, he assumes there’s someone else nearby, but then he sees that eyes are focused entirely his Clint.

 

Well, not his.  _This_.  _This_ Clint.  That’s probably the better way to phrase it, at least.

 

Clint smiles and lets go of the door.  “Mags,” he greets, and reaches to shake her hand.  Except the handshake turns into a hug, and into Mags murmuring something that makes him say, “No, not yet.”  Bruce might not be a . . . talkative person, not when compared to Tony or even Steve, but he can usually fill in the long silences.

 

Usually.  Not right now.  No, right now, he just—stands there.

 

Mags pulls away from Clint, but not before she squeezes his arm.  When she looks over at Bruce direction, he forces a tiny smile and waves feebly. 

 

“Mags, this is Bruce,” Clint introduces.  He gestures vaguely down the steps, but his eyes don’t follow his hand.  “I mentioned him a couple weeks ago.  We work together.”

 

She smiles and closes the distance, offering him a hand.  “You were either Bruce or—what’s the crazy one’s name?”

 

“Tony,” Clint and Bruce say, together.  It bunches Clint’s laugh lines.  Bruce’s never noticed them before, and he forgets to shake Mags’s hand, he’s so—focused on those tiny, surprising creases.

 

“Yes, that’s it.”  She finds his fingers and seems unbothered by his limp-wristed attempt to return the favor.  “I’m glad you’re not the crazy one,” she says.

 

“I think that’s the general sentiment when it comes to Tony,” Bruce replies, and she laughs.  She exchanges the usual pleasantries, tells Clint to hurry before the cookies are gone, and then ducks into the synagogue.  It leaves both of them standing there in the streetlamp’s yellowy glow.

 

Clint glances at the ground, a passing car, and the bike rack before he meets Bruce’s eyes.  “You don’t have to come if you don’t want,” he offers.

 

And it—it is an _offer_.  It’s not a challenge, it’s not resistant, it’s . . .  It’s a chance to get out.  To keep their secrets neatly delineated. 

 

He watches Clint for a few seconds.  “How’re the cookies?”

 

Clint’s lips twitch a half-inch.  “Words aren’t good enough,” he says.  When Bruce still doesn’t move, he asks, “You coming?”

 

Bruce nods, and they walk in together.  The meeting rooms are actually classrooms—it’s a private school, as well as a place of worship—and they walk past empty coat hooks and lunch cubbies in relative silence.  The teen group meets in a brightly-colored kindergarten room, and their laughter echoes out through the open door.  Bruce slips his jacket off and bunches it under his arm, not because he isn’t chilly but because it’s something to do with his hands.

 

The adult group’s bigger than the midday meeting a week before, thirty-five people instead of the twenty.  He helps himself to a cup of coffee and a cookie—more accurately, he tries to hang back from the group by standing at the snack table—but Clint stays close to him.  He shakes a dozen hands, greets people by name, exchanges a joke with a man old enough to be Fury’s grandfather . . .  And all without leaving Bruce’s side.  Nobody asks about Bruce, not even during the small talk about Clint’s job and friends, and Bruce—

 

He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to think, honestly.  He isn’t sure what’s going _on_.

 

The chairs are set up to face a podium, but they start by gathering in a circle around the room.  Everyone introduces themselves, even the old friends, and Bruce picks at the rim of his paper cup as they go around.

 

“I’m Clint,” Clint says next to him, and Bruce looks up.  He’s seen Clint stretched out on a chaise lounge at the Tower pool and lapsed into a sugar coma after one of Tony’s ice cream nights, but he’s never seen that face as relaxed as it is right now.  “Today’s not bad.”

 

Bruce presses his lips together, stares at his coffee, but finally just—shakes his head.

 

The woman on his other side, Jacqui, chimes right in, like the quiet isn’t unusual.

 

After the introductions, as Bruce starts to drift toward the seats at the back, Clint touches his arm.  It’s the smallest brush of fingers, almost like a breath against him, and he glances up.  “Save me a seat,” he says, quietly, but then he’s following Mags up to the front of the room.

 

Something in Bruce’s stomach turns, but he’s not sure why.  He picks the two chairs in the back-most corner, but it takes full minutes to actually _get_ there . . . mostly because his eyes keep coming up to watch Clint.

 

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” Mags says around the time Bruce finally settles into the cold metal chair.  “I know it’s getting chilly.  The teens were complaining about it a couple minutes ago.”  A handful of people laugh, but Bruce, he just—shifts, a little, in his seat.  “Clint’s agreed to do tonight’s reading, but I want you to be _gentle_ with him.  Since he gets _nervous_.”

 

The laughter’s getting louder, and Clint’s grinning at the floor.  A joke, Bruce thinks, and he can’t help the tiny smile that starts crawling up the corners of his lips.  He’s not sure what he’s witnessing, how exactly this happened, but they’re—playing with him.

 

The only person he’s ever seen _play_ with Clint Barton is Natasha, and that was after three cocktails on “mixology night.”

 

“And remember: no flash photography,” Mags finishes, and she has almost everyone tittering by the time Clint steps up.  He unfolds a sheet of paper on the podium.  Even from the back corner, Bruce can see how—creased it is.  Dog-eared, bent, battered, like it’s spent more time in Clint’s pocket than it ever has _out_ of it.  His thumb brushes along the edge before he flattens it out.

 

He clears his throat.

 

“We admitted,” he reads, “that we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable.  We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.  We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of a higher power as we understand a higher power.  We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.”

 

Clint keeps reading, but Bruce . . .  He knows the words.  He knows them from after undergrad, from after graduate school, from the hundreds of times he’s heard them.  He doesn’t need to listen to every item in the list, every step.  No, what he needs to listen to is the way Clint reads them, the way his lips move and his voice fills the room.  It’s strong, but—soothing.  Sympathetic.  He reads the steps like every word is this absolute _reality_.  Like he believes every syllable.

 

Bruce closes his eyes somewhere in the seventh step, and loses himself in Clint’s voice.

 

“We tried to carry this message to others who still suffer,” and the reading sounds like a prayer, “and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

 

After, when the cookies are all devoured and another dozen hands shaken, Bruce stands under the streetlamp and watches Clint zip up his jacket.

 

“They’re a good bunch,” he says.

 

Bruce nods.  “Yeah.”

 

But neither of them says anything else about it.

 

 

 

 

The ninth time, Bruce asks, “How long?”

 

They’re in the park, falling autumn leaves crunching under their feet.  Soon, they’ll be walking through snow, bundled up in coats and gloves.  Bruce hopes the winter isn’t anything like the last two weeks, because he’s _just_ getting over a nasty chest cold.  Twice, Tony crossed himself, hissed, and then kicked him out of the lab. 

 

Worse, he’d been in his robe and slippers before dinner for the last _two_ Wednesday nights.

 

Now, though, he’s walking next to Clint, shoulder-to-shoulder on the footpath.  He’d been tying his shoelaces when the elevator’d stopped at his apartment and Clint’d stepped out.  Waiting, Bruce realized.  Waiting on Bruce the same way he’d waited for Bruce’s cold to clear up.

 

He—isn’t sure what to think, about the waiting.

 

Clint glances over at him.  “How long for what?”

 

“How long have you been going?  To . . . group, I mean.”

 

“The one here?  Since two, three weeks after Loki.”  He shrugs.  “In general’s more like a couple years, off and on.”

 

“Oh.”  Bruce isn’t sure why _that_ ’s his answer.  Actually, he isn’t sure it’s an answer at all.  It’s more a—verbal shrug, a dodge, the sound you make when you’re not sure of your other options.  An errant rabbit darts across the path, and he watches it disappear into the underbrush.  “And how’d you know that’s where I was going?”

 

“I didn’t,” Clint admits.  His eyes lift, catch Bruce’s for a half-second, and then dip away.  He’s a master of eye contact anywhere else, with any _one_ else, but he never quite seems—comfortable, when he looks at Bruce.  “The first couple times you disappeared, I figured you just needed a time out.  But when you left three weeks in a row at the same time, I thought it was probably a meeting.”  His eyes linger the second time he looks over.  “Just had to figure out what kind.”

 

Bruce snorts.  “Expected me to be in NA?”

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“No, but you implied . . . something.”

 

“Yeah,” Clint retorts, stopping in the middle of the path.  “That I didn’t know you enough to judge.”

 

His voice, that— edge in it, it stops Bruce, too.  He stands in a muddy patch, shoes sinking into the ooze of dead leaves and leftover rain water, and he feels . . .  Guilty, he decides.  He feels like an ass, like he’s accused Clint of something unforgivable, like—

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, after a few seconds.  Clint’s watching him across the path.  His eyes are soft, almost—careful.  If Bruce didn’t know better, he’d call it fear.  “I’m not used to this.”

 

“To what?”

 

“To . . . sharing.  These kinds of—private things, I mean.”

 

For some reason, the comment makes Clint smile.  Just this one, tiny twist of his lips, with it come the lines.  They’re deeper than you’d imagine, deeper than when he’s straight-faced and serious.  “Y’know, I think I’m starting to figure that out about you.”

 

Bruce nearly laughs.  “It gets worse before it gets better,” he promises.

 

“Not sure that’s possible, but I’ll go with it.”

 

He’s not sure who grins first, or whether it’s synchronized, but Bruce’s cheeks are warm when they reach the synagogue.  Clint takes the steps by two and holds the door, again, but it’s Bruce who encounters Mags first, and Bruce who shares the first handshake with the man who reminds him of an octogenarian Fury.

 

When they get to introductions, Clint says, “I’m Clint, and today, I’m just going with it.”

 

And even though Bruce still doesn’t introduce himself, he smiles through the rest of the meeting.

 

 

 

 

The tenth time, during introductions, Clint says, “I’m Clint, and this sure beats ‘foreign film night.’”

 

And after he swallows his laugh, Bruce responds, “I’m Bruce, and _anything_ beats ‘foreign film night.’”

 

 

 

 

The eleventh time—or rather, after the eleventh time—Clint stretches under the streetlamp.  “So,” he says.  “Coffee?”

 

It’s drizzling after a day of pouring rain, and Bruce stops on the bottom step.  Clint’s wearing his usual—jeans, t-shirt, jacket—but Bruce is in a proper coat, collar turned up against the wind.  This was a longer meeting than most, with a handful of new members and Jacqui sharing a pretty horrific story about when she’d last seen her father.  Part of Bruce just . . . wants to go home.  He wants his warm apartment and a good book more than he wants to be out.  He’d actually almost skipped the meeting altogether, but then the elevator doors’d opened and Clint’d stepped into his apartment.

 

He really needed to remember that he could lock people out.  Otherwise, someone was going to walk in on him changing, one of these days.

 

He watches Clint stretch and settle.  Their eyes meet across the sidewalk.

 

“Coffee?” Bruce repeats.

 

“Coffee,” Clint says.  “Since they ran out on us.”

 

“I’m not the one who made us late.”

 

“Hey,” he protests, holding up his hands, “I figured _you’d_ want an umbrella.  ‘Cause the rain might mess up your hair.”

 

“My . . . hair?”  And Bruce, he’s trying not to give everything away with a grin, but it’s hard.  Clint’s humor, it—sneaks up on you.

 

“You’ve got that messy mad scientist curly thing going on.”  He shrugs and steps out from under the streetlamp, coming over.  Bruce runs fingers through the “mad scientist” curls, trying to straighten them or . . . something.  It makes Clint’s mouth tip in this quirky smile.  “Roberta checks it out every time you show up.”

 

Bruce scoffs.  “Now you’re trying to rattle me,” he challenges.

 

“It working?”

 

“A little.”

 

Clint laughs.  It brings this—warmth to his face, this soft red that spreads across his cheeks, and Bruce tries not to think too long about how the drizzle on his skin makes him glow in the yellow light.  That’s something for . . . romantics, people who watch too many Nicholas Sparks movies, and they don’t really fit into that category.

 

He’s a scientist and Clint’s a—secret agent, or whatever his title technically is.  No war-weary soldiers and women beaten down by their circumstances, here.

 

He’s still studying the rain on Clint’s skin when Clint says, again, “Coffee?”

 

“Coffee,” Bruce agrees, but only because it’s a reason to stop thinking.

 

There’s a café four blocks in the wrong direction that serves ridiculously-priced drinks with ridiculous names.  Bruce orders a chai latte, extra hot and with extra foam.  As he’s fumbling for his wallet, Clint presses against his side, orders himself a large black coffee, and hands the cashier a twenty.

 

“I—  You don’t have to—”

 

“It’s coffee,” Clint replies with a shrug, but he doesn’t look at Bruce when he says it.

 

The café’s mostly-empty, with foggy windows and a lit fireplace.  Bruce thanks the barista for his latte and picks an overstuffed chair by the fire.  Despite ordering it black, Clint dumps sugar and cream into his coffee at the counter.  Sugar, cream, and cinnamon, Bruce notices after a few seconds.  He’s still swirling it all around with a stir stick when he comes over.

 

There’s another oversized chair, close enough for conversation, but Clint sheds his jacket and sits on the ottoman in front of Bruce’s seat, instead.  It’s nearer to the fire than the other chair, and to the crackling of those artificial logs that are supposed to be better for small spaces.  Clint sips his coffee and focus on the dancing flames.

 

It leaves Bruce no choice but to focus on Clint.  Specifically, on his corded arms and wide hands.  He has blunt, chipped nails, he notices.  He probably catches them on arrowheads, bowstrings, the pins on the Tower’s weight machines.  He wonders if they feel rough against—

 

 _No, Banner_ , he tells himself abruptly.  _No_.

 

He forces himself to look at the fire, instead.

 

He’s halfway through his latte before Clint asks, “This a new thing?”

 

“What?”

 

“Group.  I mean, most people, they sorta—settle when they’ve been doing it a while.”  Clint tips his head in Bruce’s direction.  They’re close enough that, if Bruce sits up and leans forward, he’ll inject himself into Clint’s personal space.

 

He’s not sure whether he wants to or not.

 

“You act like maybe this is something you came up with doing right around when you got here.”

 

“It’s . . . not,” Bruce answers, after a few seconds.  He drops his eyes to the lid of his drink, studies the lip-prints he’s left on the plastic.  For a half-second, he’s afraid there’s chai all over his mouth and he rubs his lips with the side of his hand; when it comes away clean, he nods a little, just to himself.  “My, uh, dad was—  Well.  Adult children of alcoholics, you can guess how that story ends.  I started going near the end of college.”

 

Clint nods and takes a long sip of coffee.  He ditched the lid around the time he sprinkled in the cinnamon, but one of those long fingers is keeping the stir stick from popping him in the nose.  Bruce realizes too late that he’s watching him swallow a little more intently than he should.

 

He turns his own cup around in his hands.  “What about you?  You said, what, a couple years?”

 

“Yeah,” he replies, nodding again.  “After I started working for S.H.I.E.L.D., I kinda needed somewhere to—talk, I guess.”  He shrugs and stirs his coffee idly.  “I couldn’t really talk about things in the circus.  At least, not the things that mattered.  It only got worse when I left and got recruited.  I figured this was a way to get what I needed.”

 

“I—uh, I would’ve figured that you and Natasha—”

 

He snorts a little half-laugh and glances over.  “Tasha’s great, but . . .  Would you wanna tell Tony all the things you don’t even like thinking?”

 

“No,” Bruce admits quietly. 

 

“It’s like that with Tasha.”

 

“But not with me.”

 

It’s—not a question.  Bruce realizes it after he _says_ it, after Clint’s eyebrows rise a few inches and there’s a momentary catch of surprise.  He meant to _ask_ it, he meant to . . . figure out whether Clint was comfortable or not.  Instead, the statement floats between them.

 

And Clint, for once, doesn’t look anywhere else.

 

“No, not with you.  You’re different, I guess.”

 

“Different,” Bruce echoes.

 

“But not the kinda different you’re jumping to.  The other kind.”

 

Bruce nods because he doesn’t know what else to say, exactly.  He isn’t sure what the breathless feeling in the root of his stomach is, or why his heart feels like it’s been injected with speed.  He takes a long swallow of his latte, but Clint watches him for a few seconds longer.  He’s trying to work something out, Bruce thinks.  Like when they train with moving targets and he _watches_ before he shoots.  He’s trying to appraise the entire situation with that look.

 

Meanwhile, Bruce isn’t sure what the _situation_ is, not really, or what in it needs appraised in the first place.

 

He just says, “Okay,” and watches Clint nod instead of reply.  And they stay that way, half-still and silent, until Clint teases him about his rain-damp hair on the way home, and Bruce smiles.

 

 

 

 

They go out for coffee after the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth times. 

 

It’s always the same, though maybe not intentionally so, the way Clint stretches under the streetlamp, cocks his head, and asks, “Coffee?”  The autumn chill’s turned to proper _cold_ , which means Stu (the elderly Fury lookalike) brings his homemade hot chocolate to every meeting, but Clint still asks him to coffee every time.  He picks him up every time, too, stepping into his apartment and whistling if Bruce isn’t right there, ready to go.  He brings an umbrella when it’s sleeting (which, so far, has only happened once), and, after Bruce forgets, an extra pair of gloves.

 

Bruce . . . isn’t sure whether it’s a good idea, coffee every week.  The baristas greet them by name, start their drinks when they walk in the door, and refuse any payment from Bruce that isn’t a two-dollar tip.  It’s the opposite of anonymity, but—

 

But he says yes.

 

He says yes, and Clint sits on the ottoman in front of Bruce’s chair while they either talk or _don’t_ talk, depending on the night.  One week, they argue about whether Clint and Natasha colluded at Risk (and even after Clint vows innocence, Bruce still has his suspicions); another, they swap sections of the newspaper and complete the crossword puzzle together.

 

It’s—nice, to have this time with Clint, the way he has time with Tony, Steve, and Natasha.  There’s something familiar, something comfortable, in it.  In the way he can take his shoes off on the sleety night, press his toes onto the edge of the ottoman, and smile when Clint nudges his feet with the side of his thigh.

 

And in the way that, when they get to the meeting, Clint always pours him a cup of cocoa while he’s chatting with Mags and Jacqui.

 

He could do this for a long time, he finds himself thinking after the fifteenth meeting, when they’re walking through the park on fresh snow.  His belly’s warm from chai and a homemade muffin they’d split in the café.  His face is sore from laughing at a story Clint told him, which featured Agent Coulson, Director Fury, three monkeys, and a catamaran.  He thinks he could go to a thousand meetings with Clint, one for every week he lives in New York (or every week for his lifetime), and—

 

“Happy” isn’t a word Bruce uses much.  Not anymore.

 

But there’s . . .  Yeah.  There’s potential.

 

In the elevator, he peels off his gloves—well, his in the sense he’s wearing them, not _his_ in the sense of _he bought them using his own paycheck_ —and shoves them into his pockets.  “Eventually,” he offers, glancing over at Clint, “I’m going to have to return the favor.”

 

Clint snorts.  “I _don’t_ forget gloves.  Ever,” he informs Bruce.  When Bruce’s eyebrows rise, he lifts his hands.  He’s already stripped out of his gloves, so it’s all bare skin and rough calluses.  “Can’t lose my weapons of mass destruction.”

 

Bruce rolls his eyes.  “Is that what we’re calling them, now?”

 

“Calling them what they _are_ , sure.  And, remember, they saved your ass in training the other day.”

 

“Tasers feel like—tickling, mostly.”

 

“Saved your ass,” Clint repeats.  He reaches over to jab Bruce in the chest lightly, just with two of those “weapons of mass destruction” of his—but then he lingers.  He presses them against the wool of Bruce’s coat, then trails along the weave of his scarf.  Bruce swallows, watching the fingers instead of the man.

 

Fingers are easier.

 

“This,” Clint says, after a few seconds, “I might want.”

 

Bruce’s throat feels like it’s closing.  “My scarf?”

 

“Yeah.  Sure.  Your scarf.”

 

“I’ve, uh, got other ones.  If you’re interested.  I think the one might even be kinda . . . purple.”

 

The fingers stop moving somewhere near Bruce’s collarbone, and even though there’s scarf, coat, and shirt between them, he swears he can feel Clint’s heat.  The elevator slows, then stops, and the doors slide open.  His apartment is dark—he refuses to set the automatic sensors when he can just flip switches—but he hardly glances at it.

 

Because glancing up, at all, means seeing Clint.

 

Seeing Clint’s eyes, and his face, and every inch of him so . . . close.

 

Two fingers turn to three, then four, then Clint’s whole palm, spreading against his chest.

 

“This is—kinda my stop,” he says, dumbly, but he’s watching Clint’s lashes.  He’s watching them dip, watching his eyes move, and—

 

“Yeah,” Clint murmurs.  They’re close enough that Bruce, he can feel Clint’s breath on his lips.

 

Which is the last thought he has, how soft and warm Clint’s breath is, before Clint kisses him.

 

It’s—gentle.  Hesitant, almost, not the Clint he’s seen in training, but the Clint who walks beside him in the park, who produced gloves but wouldn’t make eye contact the first time Bruce forgot.  His fingers twitch like he wants to hold onto the scarf, but he—doesn’t push.  He doesn’t force it. 

 

He’s waiting.  The thought races into Bruce’s head, caught up with his pounding heart and the blood he swears he can _hear_ rushing into his belly and—lower.  Like every time, with every meeting and walk, he’s waiting for Bruce’s response.

 

That . . . knowledge, that consideration, that’s headier than any kiss Bruce’s ever had.

 

His fingers find Clint’s hip, find the rough fabric of his jeans, and he tugs him closer.  Clint lets out this sound, this— _moan_ that Bruce usually reserves for filthy fantasies in the dead of night.  He grabs Bruce’s scarf, _pulls_ it, and they stumble against each other like teenagers just learning to make out.

 

Clint tastes like coffee.  Not bitter, just—sharp, spicy, strong.  Bruce can taste the cinnamon and he _sighs_ for it, which just eggs Clint on.  They play tug-of-war with lips, tongue, and teeth, and Bruce . . .  He can’t remember the last time he felt like he could drown in touch.  Not just in the kiss, but in the closeness, in fingers that open his coat to find his side, and in—

 

In the way that he hears his name murmured during stolen breaths.  _Bruce_.  Like a mantra.

 

He’s not sure how long they stand there, in the elevator, but when they pull apart, they’re panting.  Bruce can’t close his lips or formulate words, so he just—looks.  He looks at those big, soft eyes staring at him, searching him, and he feels naked.  More exposed than in any battle or training, just from the way Clint’s peeling him apart.

 

He thinks his heart is going to leap out of his chest, but he can’t step away.  Clint’s still holding onto his scarf.

 

“Do you wanna—”  Clint starts asking, but Bruce is stumbling through, “I should probably—” and the blood rushes to his cheeks.  Like a kid caught fumbling under the bleachers.  He hasn’t felt like that in a . . . a really long time.

 

He swallows.  “I have to—  We have this teleconference.  Tony’s trying to launch this new project, it’s complicated, I—” 

 

The words aren’t coming out in the right order, though, or _any_ order that makes sense.  He releases Clint’s hip, pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to . . . think straight.  Clint’s still so close, and he smells like cold wind and hot coffee, and he wants to fall back into—

 

What?  What is there?  Making out in the elevator for another half-hour?  Ruining some sheets and not being able to look each other in the eye?  Losing a friendship because they’re caffeine-fueled and horny?

 

No.

 

That’s not—  No.

 

“It’s work,” he finally manages.

 

Clint looks at him for a few more seconds and then drops his eyes.  “Yeah, sure,” he says, and untangles his fingers from Bruce’s scarf.  “Not like it’s a big building, anyway.”

 

He nods.  “Right.  We can always—”

 

The elevator chimes, just once, and the doors start to close.  Clint leans over to mash the _door open_ button, and his fingers slip away from Bruce’s side.  He feels instantly . . .  Lonely, he thinks.  It’s a sudden, empty, lonely feeling.

 

“I’ll see you,” he says, still watching Clint.

 

“Yeah,” Clint replies, but he never looks up.

 

 

 

 

Bruce doesn’t go to a meeting for three weeks.

 

He’s not—avoiding Clint, not exactly.  He hadn’t lied about Tony’s new project, the mass-production of his industrial-strength arc reactor, and after the teleconference, that’s all he works on.  The technology’s in its infancy, the large-scale models fail more often than they succeed, and the days and nights bleed together into a frenzy of science.  He works almost around the clock, even when Tony abandons his efforts for the bottle of scotch he keeps hidden in the display mock-up of the Iron Man Mark III.

 

There’s good reason, then, to—not attend his meeting, to not take the time out of his schedule.  He’s up at dawn, showered and shaved by the time Tony’s rolling out of bed, and bent over the previous day’s data intake before Jarvis even starts the lab coffee pot.  There’s work to be done.  Important work.

 

The fact that he’s engaged the security setting that locks people out of his apartment—  Well, like he said.  Work to be done.  And the fact that he’s skipped out on three dinners with Natasha, three history lessons with Steve, and a MarioKart night, that’s just coincidence.

 

The third Wednesday he doesn’t go, he’s bent over his computer instead, letting a carton of leftover lo mein turn gummy and lukewarm beside him.  His eyes hurt, and all his charts are scattered across the table, but at least he’s doing . . . something.  In fact, he’s bending to scribble a note on one of those charts when the elevator chimes.

 

He breaks the tip off his pencil.

 

The elevator, it hasn’t chimed at all in those three weeks.  He’s started texting or sending scribbled notes to people when he’s canceled on them, so the sound, it—it makes his heart jump into his throat.  His head swims, and for those first seconds, he can’t think.  Then, he panics, wonders if he’s forgotten to engage the elevator lock, if there’s a security problem, _something_ . . . 

 

But there’s still a red light on the display panel.  It means the elevator shouldn’t chime, and the doors shouldn’t open.

 

But they—do.

 

“You know,” Tony remarks as he steps into the apartment, “you’d make a pretty good hermit.  Maybe we can get you some cottage in West Virginia.  And a shotgun.  A couple ‘no trespassin’’ signs and—”

 

“The elevator _was_ locked,” Bruce points out, and looks back to the computer.

 

He scrolls through another page of data points—energy input and output, taken every second for the sixteen hours before the last model failed—and only occasionally glances over the tops of his glasses to check on Tony.  He’s wearing work-out clothes—sweatpants, t-shirt—but is . . . barefoot.  He almost asks, but asking means engaging.

 

He doesn’t want to engage, he wants to work.

 

“I give you Wednesday nights off for a reason, you know,” Tony comments after—seconds?  Minutes?  Long enough to get bored and uncomfortable in silence, at least.  “Never figured out where you were going, never asked, just gave you Wednesday night off.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“Barton, too.  Of course, he did the right thing, came and groveled for it, but hey.  I thought if you like getting spanked with a bowstring, more power to you.”  Bruce’s head jerks up fast enough that Tony raises his hands.  He’s holding a copy of _Scientific American_ , the pages rolled to display an article on himself.  As though Tony Stark would ever read an article on a _different_ scientist.  “Withdrawn.”

 

Bruce sighs and focuses back on the screen.  He feels like he’s—teetering on the edge of something.  He’s felt that way for weeks, like he’s either going to plummet or fly, but it’s worse with Tony here.  In the lab, there’s distractions, other things to focus on, reasons to _not_ talk.

 

It’s like Clint said at the coffee shop: it’s hard to say the things you don’t even like thinking about.

 

“Your point?”

 

“My point is this: imagine my surprise when, three Wednesdays in a row, you practically bowl over unpaid interns to lock yourself in your room and do data entry.”  Tony tosses the magazine on the couch, rounding it.  Bruce’s set up at his kitchen table, which is great for spreading out all his paperwork and notes, but horrible for avoiding nosy friends who can’t leave well enough alone.  Or who, in Tony’s case, press their hands on the far side of the table and lean over it.  “And when, on those Wednesdays, Barton’s working himself into cardiac arrest down in the gym.”

 

Something in Bruce’s stomach twists, and he pulls his head up.  He thinks he’s being subtle, just—a concerned teammate with a healthy curiosity, but Tony’s eyebrows lift. 

 

Too quick, he thinks.  He looked up too quick.

 

Especially since Tony immediately follows it up with, “Figure of speech.  Guy’s fine.  Sweaty, bad attitude, but—fine.”

 

Bruce nods, because those are the only muscles that work, and drops his gaze back to the computer screen.  The numbers aren’t numbers anymore, just these swimming black squiggles in his vision, and he pushes his glasses out of the way so he can rub his eyes.  He’s exhausted, not enough sleep and too much . . . work.

 

That’s what he tells himself, at least.  He’s been working too hard.  Nothing else, just the stress from work.

 

“Y’know,” Tony remarks, straightening up to his full height instead of that fake-intimidating _looming_ thing, “far be it for me and my breath-taking collection of relationship issues to judge, but you should probably kiss and make up.”

 

Bruce pinches the bridge of his nose, lets out a breath—and no, Tony’s still there when he looks up.  “There’s no making-up to do,” he says.  He hears it in his own voice, the little tremor, and he forces himself to swallow.  Without his glasses, the screen and charts are a blur, but he can still pick up the papers.  Stack them, organize them, keep his head and his brain busy while—

 

“You sure about that?”

 

“Absolutely.”

 

“ _Really_ sure about that?”

 

“Do you want me to sign some kind of contract proving it?”

 

“If it’ll get you to stop moping around like Cinderella after her step-mom said she couldn’t go to the ball, sure, but otherwise—”

 

“Stop!” Bruce finally snaps, and he—throws the papers down.  He doesn’t even think about it, the fact that there’s three weeks of printed, tracked, sorted data flying across the table and floor, he just throws them.  It’s satisfying for half a second, but then it’s _not_ again and his heart—  He doesn’t like how his heart feels.  He doesn’t like how it wants to beat out of his chest, break him in half like a twig.  He balls his fists and presses them to the tabletop. 

 

His knuckles ache from the pressure.

 

Good.

 

“Bruce,” Tony murmurs.  Bruce drops his head, stares at the screen he can’t read.  His jaw works and he’s about to curse him out, about to—tell him to go away, to find someone else to bother—when a hand wraps around his wrist.

 

He wants to wrench away, but he—can’t.

 

“Bruce,” Tony says, again.

 

“I broke it.  Is that what you want to hear?”  Bruce hates how distant and caught his voice sounds, like it’s snagging on the rough edges no one can see.  “I screwed up, I broke it, and it’s done.”

 

A rough thumb brushes his pulse point, just once.  He can feel the touch in his throat.  “It’s not broken unless you refuse to fix it.”

 

Bruce snorts.  “And you’re the expert on fixing relationships?”

 

“Hey, who convinced Pepper not to hate him after he successfully hid his almost-death from her for, like, two months?  ‘Cause I’m pretty sure his name rhymes with _brony_ , not— _puce_?  Puce is a thing, right?  I didn’t make that up.”

 

He shouldn’t smile, but _something_ presses at the corners of his lips.  It’s soft and fleeting, but it’s the first time he’s smiled in . . .   Well.  “It’s a color,” he says.

 

“Right.  Anyway, point is, I break things all the time.  Blow ‘em wide open and mostly not on purpose.  But then I go out, I buy some strawberries—”

 

“She’s allergic, isn’t she?”

 

“—or some wine,” Tony amends, “and then I beg forgiveness.  On my knees.  With a whole lot of—”

 

“I—get it,” Bruce interrupts, holding up his free hand.  He swallows again, shakes the cobwebs off his thoughts, and when he looks up a second time, Tony’s watching him.  Clint’s eyes are soft and lingering, but Tony’s are—intense.  Focused, always, like life itself is a science project and every person is just another variable to work out.

 

After a few seconds, he extracts his wrist from Tony’s grip.  “It’s not as easy as you think,” he points out, quietly.

 

“Important stuff’s never easy,” Tony replies, shrugging.  “That’s how it becomes important.”

 

 

 

 

The sixteenth time, Bruce goes alone.

 

He leaves an hour earlier than he ever would with Clint, and wanders silently through the snow in the park.  It’s bitterly cold, and the wind whips through the trees hard enough to cut through his coat, scarf, and gloves.  Clint’s gloves, he reminds himself.  He almost didn’t put them on, just outside Stark Tower, because of what they—meant.  Just like how he almost didn’t wear his scarf, the scarf Clint’d stroked in the elevator.

 

But gloves and scarves, they’re just . . . things.  They don’t have meaning of their own, just the memories that come out of them. 

 

The gloves were warm over his fingers, and the scarf helps—barely—against the wind.

 

The meeting room’s empty when he arrives, but the chairs are already set up, so he sheds his coat and scarf over the back of the last chair and, when there’s still no one there, finds the supply of napkins and snack plates in the cabinet.  He’s setting them up when Mags arrives, complete with a canister of coffee she drops in surprise.

 

“I thought we’d lost you!” she exclaims, and waylays Bruce on his way back to the cabinet to hug him.  He freezes, caught in the momentary shock, and then tentatively hugs her back.  She squeezes his arms before she lets go.  “Clint sent me a few texts, said he was busy at work, but he never told me what you were up to.”

 

“Just, uh, about the same,” Bruce says, rubbing the back of his neck.

 

“No trouble at home?”  When he sputters, Mags just smiles.  “I’m not an idiot.  He spends two months telling me about this _friend_ of his, and then the friend shows up?  Please.”  Her airy wave gives Tony a run for his money—until she frowns.  “Oh.  Oh, there _is_ trouble at home.  Isn’t there?”

 

“It’s—complicated.”

 

“Men are always complicated.”

 

“I . . .  That’s not exactly what I meant.”

 

“It’s all right,” Mags soothes.  She rubs her palm along Bruce’s arm, squeezes it again, and then lets it go.  “All relationships go through this, you’ll see.”

 

He’s not sure he agrees, but he can’t really _dis_ agree, either, so he just—nods and backs away, towards the cabinet.  There’s coffee brewing by the time Not-Fury (Stu) arrives with his cocoa, then Jacqui brings homemade cupcakes, and soon the basement’s thrumming with energy and conversation.  Bruce tries to keep up with everyone, to shake hands and assure people that no, really, he’s been fine, just busy with work, but he’s not really focused.  Not when he can’t help but look up every time the door opens.  Not when his heart’s taken permanent residence in his throat and all he can think is _Clint’s not coming_.

 

It turns into this—devotional, this chant in his head.  _Clint’s not coming, Banner_ , and his hand trembles when he pours his third cup of coffee.  _Clint’s not coming, you ruined it, it’s over, you can’t fix this, he’s not coming._

He’s still worrying the paper cup of coffee when they gather in their circle for introductions.  There’s a few new faces, and some familiar ones missing.  Bruce falls into the familiar cadence of _Hi, I’m So-and-So, and today is some kind of day_.

 

When a voice across the circle says, “I’m Clint,” Bruce’s head jerks up fast enough that his teeth knock together and he splashes coffee across the side of his hand.  There he is, standing almost exactly across the circle, his head tipped toward the floor.  He should’ve known, Bruce thinks.  He should’ve remembered that Clint’s a master at slipping in unnoticed—that he’s _paid_ to move without making a sound—but . . .

 

But he’s used to the Clint that crunches in the snow, and puts cinnamon in his coffee.

 

“And it’s Wednesday,” Clint says, and never looks up.

 

There’s more names, almost a dozen of them, but Bruce doesn’t hear a single one.  He watches Clint worry the toe of his boot against the carpet, watches his fingers dance against the seam of his jeans, and watches his throat move when he swallows.  His face is a little wind-chapped, probably from a mission.  He needs lip balm, and a haircut.

 

“Bruce,” the woman next to him murmurs, and he blinks before he realizes it’s his turn.

 

“I, uh, I’m Bruce.”  He can’t remember the last time he’d forgotten his own name.  “And today’s better than yesterday.”

 

Across the circle, Clint’s eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t look up.

 

And at the end of the meeting, after everyone’s shared, Bruce looks up from his empty coffee cup and discovers Clint’s gone.

 

 

 

 

The seventeenth time, Bruce runs late.  Steve’s “ten minutes, I swear, I just need to know how to put music on this for when I work out” lesson in the art of the iPod took an hour and a half, and there’s slush from melting snow spraying up behind Bruce as he jogs through the park.  He slides on the tile in the foyer, catches himself on the wall, and half-runs down the hallway to the meeting room.

 

They’re halfway through introductions, already.  Across the circle, Mags raises her eyebrows, and Bruce shakes his head as he slides between Jacqui and a reedy guy named Kevin. 

 

He’s still catching his breath when, a half-dozen bodies away, he hears, “I’m Clint.”

 

He twists his head, expecting a lowered face and half-hooded eyes—and instead, Clint’s looking directly at him.  Bruce forgets how to breathe for a moment, but then the air rushes in.  It sounds enough like a gasp that both Kevin and Jacqui glance at him.

 

He doesn’t return the favor.  Not when he’s watching Clint.

 

“Today’s—not too bad,” Clint finishes, and his eyes drop.

 

The other six people, including reedy Kevin, introduce themselves while Bruce studies the shaving nick on Clint’s jawline.

 

“I’m Bruce,” he says, when Kevin’s done, “and I’m pretty good with today.”

 

 

 

 

The eighteenth time, Mags says, “Clint’s agreed to share with us tonight.”

 

It’s a bitterly cold night, the kind where you feel your lungs crystalize the minute you step outside.  Bruce’d fantasized about hot coffee the whole way to the synagogue, bundled in his coat, gloves, scarf, and even earmuffs (just this once), but when Mags makes her announcement, he forgets to swallow and burns his tongue.  He’s in the back row, the far right corner, and Clint’s mirroring him on the left.  Or at least, he is until he stands and shuffles toward the front of the room.

 

He’d been chatting quietly with Mags when Bruce arrived, but Bruce’d just assumed—  Well.  Mags sends him daily text messages asking for updates about the “home situation,” and Bruce’d figured it was more of the same.  Not—this.

 

Not Jacqui squeezing Clint’s hand as he passes, or Stu wolf-whistling when he gets to the front.

 

Mags sends them all a withering look.  “Behave yourself,” she warns, and points a finger directly at Stu.  “Remember how hard this was for each of you, the first time you shared, and cut him a bit of slack.  You hear me?”

 

There’s some murmured agreements, and Mags touches Clint’s arm and whispers something before she steps away from the podium.  Bruce’s stomach swims.  He watches Clint settle in front of it and unfold a piece of paper.  The same paper from the day he read, Bruce realizes.  The same worn-out copy of the steps, words he probably knows by memory.  Those wide, rough hands run over the surface of the paper, but Clint doesn’t glance up.  Even from the back of the room, Bruce can see his throat work.  He can see Clint roll his lips together.

 

Bruce presses the sore bit of his tongue against his teeth and—waits.

 

“My dad,” Clint says, finally, “he—drank.  I grew up in Iowa, and pretty much everybody did it.  It was just the kinda thing you did, there.  A couple beers after work but before dinner, that was normal.”  He runs his thumb along the edge of the paper, but Bruce knows it’s just for comfort.  A tic.  He looks away when he says something important, he stretches before he asks a question he doesn’t know the answer to, and right now, he strokes the paper.

 

“I was probably six, seven years old before I realized that it—kinda wasn’t that normal.  I mean, a couple drinks probably were, but my brother and I . . .  We had this routine, y’know?  My dad’s car’d pull up after work, and Barney, he’d get the glass outta the cabinet while I got the beer.  Everything on the table before Dad walked through the door.”  He snorts a little, shakes his head.  “When he crashed out on the couch after dinner, we’d toss the bottles.  Barney collected the caps for a long time.”

 

Bruce—can’t remember the last time Clint mentioned his brother.  In passing, maybe, at the coffee shop, or maybe during a briefing, talking about how he ended up in the circus.  Clint’s eyes are dipped, still staring at the paper, but Bruce can see the creases on his brow, the way his lips are pressed together.  He wants to . . .  He wants to touch.  He wants to press his thumb to every one of those lines and smooth them away, rub them out like you’d do with modeling clay.

 

But he can’t, not when he’s in the back corner of the room.

 

“Thing was, though, he was a pretty good guy when he didn’t drink.  He—  There was this one time, he took us to this ballgame.”  There’s a tiny smile nudging at the corners of Clint’s mouth.  “Fuckin’ awful team from, god, Davenport or something.  Anyway, after the game, he talked some security guard into letting us on the field.  We stayed ‘till midnight, just—hitting balls and running bases.”  He laughs, but . . . privately, Bruce thinks.  It’s a laugh he doesn’t want to share.  “But the second he got a couple beers in him . . . ”

 

He shakes his head, again.

 

“The night it happened, he was—  I’d fucked up at school, I don’t even remember what I’d done, but he came home spittin’ _pissed off_ at everybody and went through the beers we had left in the fridge.”  His hand stills and spreads over the page.   “And he cussed me out _good_ before he decided he needed another drink.  My mom, she knew he couldn’t drive—I mean, he couldn’t stand, so he sure as hell couldn’t drive—and offered to take him.  Just . . . tryin’ to keep things calm as she could, you know?”

 

His voice trips, catches, and Bruce—

 

Bruce can’t look away from Clint, or unhear the hitched breaths he swallows around.

 

“Turns out, they got into a pretty big fight at the store, and she let him drive home.  Well, let him try.  It—didn’t go so well.”

 

There’s silence, then, silence that Bruce and only Bruce recognizes as waiting.  It’s a different kind of waiting than on the walks they used to take, on in-and-out missions where Bruce sits with Coulson in the car, or when they play Monopoly on game night.  Those times, Clint’s waiting on someone else: on Bruce, on a mark, on Thor’s next outrageous barter.

 

Clint’s waiting on himself, this time, and when he glances up, Bruce can see why. 

 

Because Bruce can see the wet pooling against his eyelids.

 

Their eyes meet, just for a few seconds, and Bruce—  For the first time in his life, even since he, let’s say, “created” the Other Guy (now there’s a word), he wants to . . . go back in time.

 

He wants to go back to the elevator and hold onto Clint, instead of letting go.

 

But then, Clint’s eyes are gone, and he’s pressing his fingers against the podium and the paper.

 

“And the thing is—the thing I don’t get, I mean, is . . .  That accident, the one that killed him and my mom, that was on _him_.  He killed them.  He was too fuckin’ drunk to drive that car, he drove it over the median and slammed into a semi-truck, and still everybody in town showed up at the funeral and talked about what a good guy my dad was.  And he _wasn’t_.”  His fingers curl, crumpling the paper.  He clutches it until his arm shakes.  “He hit us, he told us we were stupid and worthless and a waste of space, he pushed my mom around and ended up killing her . . .  And then we had to listen to how fuckin’ fabulous he was.”

 

He snorts.  It’s this tiny, lost sound, and the shrug—  Bruce’s seen that shrug a thousand times.

 

It’s the shrug when Clint . . . gives up.

 

“And I can’t—  I just can’t work that one out.”

 

For a few seconds, nothing moves.  There’s not a breath in the room, not a shift of muscle or the sound of a metal chair creaking, but then, the silence . . . breaks.  Someone sitting near reedy Kevin sniffles, another someone coughs, and finally Stu starts clapping.  It’s a slow clap, raggedly moving from one edge of the group to another, like nobody knows quite what they’re clapping _at_.

 

Clint stares at his hands for a few more seconds, then steps away from the podium.  He shoves the crumpled paper into his pocket, and then his head rises.  His eyes are still lost, still drowning slowly, but for a few seconds, they’re all for Bruce.

 

And Bruce, he—knows.

 

Not just that his secret is safe, or that it always was.  No.  He knows what Clint saw, every time he raised his eyes.  He knows why he’s never paid for coffee, why Clint bumped his bare toes on the ottoman, why he waited and why he brought gloves.

 

He knows why he’s different, and it’s because they’re—the same.  It’s because, when he looks at Clint across the room, he sees himself, reflected.

 

 _We tried to carry this message to others who still suffer_ , Bruce remembers.  That step, it just leaves out the fact that everybody kind of—still suffers.

 

After a quick thank-you from Mags and some unsubtle tissue-sharing from the cluster of people around reedy Kevin, the meeting’s dismissed.  Chairs clunk, coats rustle, and Stu shouts over all of it, admonishing people to take the last of the cocoa.  Bruce sets his coffee cup on the floor, spilling it as soon as he stands up, and nearly bowls into one of the newer members trying to get to—

 

“Clint.”

 

He—means to say it quietly, he does, but there’s enough noise in the room that he ends up half-shouting it.  His voice turns a few heads, but he ignores them.  He ignores the fact that he’s leaving coffee-soaked footprints across the carpet, too, because he’s trying to weave through people and get across the room.

 

He’s four chairs away, then two, then—

 

Then, their eyes meet.

 

Five feet away, close enough to touch, and their eyes meet.

 

For a second, that’s all there is, a helpless staring contest across empty chairs.  At least, until Bruce asks, “Coffee?”

 

His voice cracks so hard, it nearly shatters.

 

Clint’s eyes dip, and he shakes his head.  It’s one tiny, half-hearted little shake, but it’s—enough.  Enough to make Bruce’s chin dip and his eyes focus on the carpet, enough to feel like he’s been punched in the stomach, enough to tie his heart in a double-knot.

 

He stares at the floor until he remembers how to formulate sentences.

 

And he knows before he looks up that Clint’s already gone.

 

 

 

 

The nineteenth time, it’s—different.

 

He’s neither early nor late, this time, just—right on schedule, and it doesn’t surprise him when Clint walks in all of five minutes later.  He’d thought maybe, just maybe, he’d heard the crunching of footsteps on snow behind him, that maybe there’d been a shadow stretching through the streetlamp’s yellowy halo.  But he hadn’t looked, just in case looking made it—real.

 

Less room for disappointment, that way.

 

The five minute delay’s enough for a cup of coffee and one of the scones Jacqui brought, enough to start up a conversation with Stu about his cross-country skiing trip with his daughter and son-in-law.  It’s enough time, too, to spread his scarf— _the_ scarf, that thick-knit gray thing from the elevator—over the back of a chair.

 

The far-back, far-left chair.

 

Clint’s chair.

 

Clint doesn’t notice it at first.  Bruce knows because he’s watching, even while Stu’s talking about spraining his ankle on exposed roots along a trail.  He’s watching every step Clint makes, every hand he shakes, every half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.  Clint pours himself a cup of coffee, snags a brownie instead of a scone, and then twists toward his chair.

 

Twists, and freezes.

 

Bruce knows Stu’s talking, he knows people are breathing, moving, and eating, but he feels like someone’s put his entire existence on hold.  He clutches his half-full paper cup a little too hard, ignoring Stu without really intending to, and watches Clint.  He watches when Clint abandons his fresh-poured coffee and crosses the room slowly, and when those rough fingers slide along the loose weave of the scarf.

 

When Clint glances up, he finds Bruce’s eyes.

 

But that’s all it is, just that one, long look.

 

Mags calls the meeting to order, and Clint leaves the scarf to join the circle.  They share names—Clint’s _okay_ and Bruce, because he can’t think of anything else to say, is _cold_ —and settle into their seats.  There’s too many bodies in the back row for Bruce to see across to Clint, to know what he did with the scarf.

 

But he spends the entire recitation of the steps leaning backward and then forward again, craning his neck, trying to see.

 

“Anna was planning on sharing tonight,” Mags says at the front, once the steps are finished and the graduate student who read them sits down, “but her son just came down with the chicken pox.  I know it’s shorter notice than most of you like, but does anyone want to share?”

 

Bruce shifts in his seat.  He still can’t see the scarf—he figures he won’t, not until the meeting’s over and Clint’s decided what to do with it—and the room’s silent.  Someone in the front coughs, a few heads dip, but no one moves.  It’s a college course on the day nobody did the reading, Bruce thinks.  He almost smiles at the thought.  Or maybe it’s a debriefing when Tony’s destroyed more cars than he’s _avoided_ thanks to some colossal misfiring of the Iron Man suit.

 

“Anyone?” Mags presses.  “I know none of you want to hear about Buttons the cat again.  And that is still my default story, thanks for asking.”

 

Someone snorts a laugh.  Another someone swears and bends down to pick up a dropped chunk of scone.  A phone vibrates in a purse or pocket.

 

And that’s when Bruce says, “I will.”

 

His hand trembles, a little, when he raises it.  He _sees_ it first, then feels it, and a handful of heads twist to—gape, he realizes.  They’re gaping at him, the quiet guy who sits in the back and rarely speaks outside of introductions.  Even Mags’s eyebrows are raised in surprise.

 

“Well,” she says, trying to cover it.  “Let’s welcome Bruce up to the podium.”

 

Stu claps, reedy Kevin joining in after a few seconds, and Bruce kind of smiles, softly, as he meanders up to the front of the room.  His feet don’t feel like they’re part of his body, and for a second, he thinks about changing his mind.  He could still apologize, still walk away and back to the arc reactor Tony’s fiddling with in the lab.  He’s not obligated to talk, not until he’s in front of the podium and everyone’s watching him.

 

Except if he’d really wanted to run, he should’ve run ten, eleven weeks ago.

 

He should’ve run the first time Clint waited for him outside the synagogue.

 

The podium’s uneven, and it teeters to the left when he puts his hands on it.  He rocks it, back and forth, just using his palms.  Everyone’s waiting, but he can’t say anything, not—right away.  All he can do is rock the podium back and forth, staring at the wood grain.

 

“Hey,” he says, after a few seconds.  “I’m Bruce.  I’ve been coming here for a while, but I know a lot of you . . . don’t really know me.”  He snorts, softly, and lets his eyes rise.  In the back of the room, Clint’s head is dipped and he’s staring at—

 

Bruce swallows.

 

Clint’s staring the scarf that’s balled up in his hands.

 

“The fact you don’t know me, that’s mostly my fault.  I, uh, got sick.  A couple years ago.  It was this accident at work, and—  Well, I bet some of you know how that can change you.  But I kind of blame that on why I don’t like—getting close to new people.  And really, it’s a pretty good reason, the fact I got sick enough that I almost died, not to . . . try anything new.”

 

He presses his lips together.  It feels like there are thirty thousand people in that room instead of thirty, like every eye’s on him.  Every eye, he thinks, except the ones that matter.  He can’t think about those eyes, can’t think about Clint’s lowered face.

 

Except every time he glances up, the only thing he sees is the wind-tossed mess of Clint’s hair, and the scarf he’s holding in his lap.

 

“But getting sick, that’s—not actually the reason.  It’s the excuse, sure, but it’s not why I hide.  Or why I come here.  The real reason, it . . .  It’s bigger.”

 

He thinks he sees Clint’s head twitch, start to lift, but maybe not.

 

“My dad, he was a scientist. A physicist, probably the best in his field. And he wanted to develop clean energy, but back when I was a kid, the only kind of energy people were really working with was radiation. Nuclear power, fission versus fusion, and it . . . It kind of turned into an obsession, I guess. He—started participating in these radical groups, started thinking that everybody was getting eradiated, started obsessing about mutation. And then, I was born.”

 

He wets his lips before he swallows around the lump in his throat.

 

He knows, somehow, that Clint’s not watching.  He’s still staring at the wood grain, at the empty podium but—he feels the absence, the _difference_ in the room.  He can usually feel Clint’s gaze running through his veins, but . . .  Not now.

 

“And I—made the mistake of being smart.  No extra limbs, but I talked early, walked early, read early.  And to my dad, that meant I was—mutated.  That I was wrong.  And it . . .  made him angry.”  Bruce pulls in a breath enough that his lungs burn.  “I don’t know if he drank before then, before I—started showing how smart I was,” he continues, “but it got . . . rough.  He’d wake me up in the middle of the night, measure me, give me tests to try and figure out how—far gone, I guess, I was.  If I complained or cried, he’d—  Well.  That doesn’t take a lot of imagination, does it?”  He shakes his head.  He considers rubbing his face, hiding for a few seconds behind his palm, but the words, they—don’t stop.  “My mom, she’d step in, every once in a while.  Stop him, scream at him, whatever she could do to keep him from hurting me.  But it just—made her a target, instead.”

 

And he can remember, in that second, the sound of his mother’s howling tears.  Of how his father’s palm against her face sounded while he cowered under the bed.

 

When Bruce looks up, Jacqui’s drying her eyes.  Stu’s staring at him.

 

But Clint—

 

Clint’s still watching the scarf.

 

“One night, she woke me up,” he presses on, because he has to, now.  There’s no way out, there’s no other ending, and he—  He can’t give up, not until it’s real.  Maybe when it is, Clint’ll look up.  Maybe when he says it, when the words are in the world, he’ll see Clint’s face with the others, see for certain that Clint’s eyes are the softest of everyone’s.  “It was late, and she—had my coat.  She told me to be quiet and get it on.  Shoes, too.  Except when we stepped out of my room, he was—there.  In the hallway.”

 

Bruce’s fingers curl around the edge of the podium.  His arms tremble, so he grips it harder.

 

“He told me to go into my room.  I think I started to, maybe, but it didn’t matter because he—”

 

He tries to swallow, tries to steady his voice.  It doesn’t work.

 

“When she fell, after he hit her, she—hit her head against the wall, I think.  I—don’t know.  I just remember the blood, and the smell of my dad’s cheap whisky, and how . . . still, she got.  And I—”

 

When he looks up, he—he needs to see Clint.  He needs it like oxygen, like—warmth in the winter.  He needs it like sunlight and water and the thousand other elements that make up one’s _life_.  He needs those soft eyes, those full lips, and the lines he’s counted a thousand times.

 

But they’re not there.

 

Clint’s still staring at his lap.  He’s still holding onto the scarf, but he’s—not looking up.

 

Bruce doesn’t realize he’s stepped away from the podium until his hands are shoving the door to the meeting room open.  He doesn’t hear Mags calling after him, he doesn’t hear the noise of surprise Stu makes, he just— _goes_.  Down the hallway with the coat hooks and the lunch cubbies, through the foyer with the puddles from melted snow, and outside.  His shadow breaks the perfect circle of yellow light on the sidewalk, but he doesn’t care.  Not when he’s letting out a sound, a _roar_ of—of frustration and anger and _grief_.  Not when his voice is cracking and breaking from _roar_ to _cry_ , steam from his breath and his tears in the winter air, or when he’s punching the lamppost.

 

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, he thinks, and he punches the post with his other fist, freezing metal against bare knuckles.  This isn’t how _baring_ yourself, how—sharing your secrets is supposed to end.  It’s not supposed to all draw to a close with a—a scarf Clint doesn’t put around his neck, or eyes that never lift.  Or with one kiss greedy kiss in an elevator before they never speak again.

 

 _You’re an idiot for thinking you could fix this_ , and he’s swearing, out loud, swearing at the voice of reason in his head and the fact that it’s _right_.  _You’re an idiot, and you deserve everything you get, you deserve—_

 

“Hey.”

 

It’s one syllable.  One—half-breathed sound in the cold, dark night, but Bruce’s head still snaps up hard enough that he feels the momentum in the back of his skull.  Because there, standing at the edge of the streetlamp’s circle of light, is Clint.  He’s wearing his unzipped coat and gloves—and the scarf, too, which hangs down against his t-shirt.  Bruce’s coat, the worn-out brown wool thing he’s kept for most of his adult life, hangs over Clint’s arm. 

 

For a few seconds, Bruce—can’t believe that he’s there.  He raises his hand, rubs his palm against his cheeks and forehead, but . . .  No.  No, Clint’s still standing a few feet away, still holding onto his coat, when he looks up.

 

The steam from Bruce’s sigh dissipates too slowly.

 

“I,” he says, but Clint says it too, and they each snort their own, tiny laughs.  Clint’s head dips, and the light touches his cheeks.  They’re rounded from his little half-smile, rounded and wind-chapped, and it takes Bruce full seconds to recognize the shadowy tracks that run down them.

 

Tear trails.

 

Dry, now, but—not forgotten.

 

He wets his lips.  “I’m sorry.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah.”  Bruce nods, but a shiver runs through him, and the next words are caught by the sound of his teeth chattering.  “And cold,” he admits, and Clint hides that tiny almost-smile by shaking his head.

 

“Couldn’t wait to have your emotional storm-out ‘till you put your coat on?” Clint asks, unfolding Bruce’s coat.  He expects it to be handed over, thrust at him, but instead Clint steps forward and, in one smooth movement, snaps it over his shoulders.

 

They’re close, now.  They’re close enough that Bruce can smell Mags’s strong coffee on Clint’s breath.

 

“You catch frostbite,” Clint says quietly, “and we don’t get to make up.”

 

Bruce swallows around his smile.  “We’re making up?”

 

“Unless you wanna find a new meeting, yeah.  We’re making up.”

 

There’s something—lost, in Clint’s eyes, when they meet Bruce’s.  For a second, that’s all there is between them, just—that helpless expression and Clint’s fingers tangled in the open flaps of Bruce’s coat.  But then the wind blows a curl of hair onto Bruce’s forehead, and when he raises his head to shake it away, Clint leans forward and kisses him.  Kisses him like in the elevator that night, gentle and lingering and—

 

Right, Bruce thinks, and how often does he get to call anything in his life _right_?

 

There’s no demanding urgency, either, not this time.  There’s no stumbling into each other, no tug-of-war, no panting repetitions of Bruce’s name.  His fingers find the scarf—Clint’s scarf now, because Bruce’ll never be able to look at it as _his_ again—and he grips it, reeling Clint in until their heat combines from chest to navel.  Their open coats curl around them, but Bruce doesn’t need a coat, not when he’s pressed against Clint like this.

 

“Clint,” he murmurs, somewhere in the middle of a breath, “I—”

 

“About damn time!” Stu yells.

 

They try to stay close, try not to break the kiss, but Clint can’t contain his grin.  He laughs against Bruce’s mouth, pulling away.  Bruce feels the blood rush into his cheeks and neck, and he considers hiding, just for a few seconds, in Clint’s shoulder.  On the steps into the synagogue, Stu bangs a hand against his empty carafe of cocoa and wolf-whistles until Mags smacks him upside the head.

 

“Leave them alone!” she chides.

 

“The hell should I?  We been watching ‘em mope for the last month, we might as well cheer ‘em on!”

 

Jacqui catches Stu by the arm and starts dragging him away.  Reedy Kevin finger-waves, then follows, and leaves Mags and her canister of coffee standing on the steps.

 

“Stu’s right,” she says simply, and then walks off in the direction of the parking lot.

 

Clint laughs, again, shaking his head, and Bruce abandons all semblance of—pride, or maybe self-control, to lean his forehead against Clint’s shoulder.  His forehead, first, then his cheek and nose, and he doesn’t realize that he’s missed Clint’s smell until it’s all around him.

 

At least, it’s all around him until Clint nudges him away enough that he can tilt up onto his toes.  He’s shifting, Bruce thinks, and then he realizes it’s not a shift at all. 

 

It’s a stretch.

 

“So,” Clint says after a few seconds, his heels settling back on the sidewalk.  “Coffee?”

 

“No,” Bruce replies, laughing, and uses the scarf to pull Clint in and kiss him again.

 

 

 

 

The twentieth time, they come in together.

 

It’s not as cold as the Wednesday before, a Wednesday with a wind-chill so low that Clint’d shown up at Bruce’s apartment with a goose-down comforter and the complete collection of Indiana Jones movies.  “Already texted Mags,” he promised, and they’d huddled down for the night in a ball of shared warmth.

 

No, instead, it’s the kind of cold where you can walk leisurely to your destination, nudging the backs of one another’s hands, and laugh about Steve’s struggle to use any kind of touch-based technology (because today, Tony gave Steve an iPad as an early birthday gift, and . . . yeah).  It’s the cold where your breaths dance on the air, mingled up together, when you stop to kiss under the streetlamp just because you _can_.

 

In the meeting room, a half-dozen people with names Bruce never _completely_ remembers—Eric, maybe, and Christian or Tristan, plus the girl who puts an extra Y in _Marilyn_ —stop him to shake his hand and talk about the week he shared.  One time, when he glances up, Stu grins at him like a particularly naughty Cheshire cat.  Another time, Mags smiles and winks at him like she’s just become sole proprietor of the world’s biggest secret.

 

Bruce thinks that secrets are owned a little more jointly than that, but he smiles at Mags, anyway.

 

After all the handshaking and small talk, he finds Clint near the coffee pot.  He’s ditched his coat but not the scarf, and Bruce likes the way it hangs against his chest.  “Jacqui made us our very own cookies,” he says, and gestures to the box he’s set on Bruce’s chair.  “And Kevin wants us to come to dinner with him and his boyfriend, sometime.”

 

Bruce blinks, twice, and then twists around to where Kevin’s standing in a group of twenty-somethings.  When Kevin catches his gaze, he turns a shade of red Crayola’d love to bottle.  Bruce smiles over at him, nods just enough to coax a nervous little grin out of Kevin, and then looks back over at Clint.

 

“Maybe we can con Tony into _help us make an appetizer_ night,” he suggests, and Clint laughs.

 

They gather in the circle for introductions, Mags starting as she always does, and Bruce listens to every name down the line.  Samatha’s good, Amber’s tired, and Chris (not Christian) had a long day at work.  Jacqui’s frustrated, Stu’s strong, and Elizabeth wishes she was braver.  Ten names, then twenty, and then the introductions come to Clint.

 

“I’m Clint,” he says, stealing one corner-of-the-eye glance at Bruce, “and I’m pretty damn good.”

 

There’s no hiding Bruce’s smile, but then, Bruce doesn’t try.

 

“I’m Bruce,” he says, immediately after, “and I’ve never been better.”

 


End file.
